Monday, February 6, 2012

TECH TIP: How to Spot Fraudulent Email With Bogus Links

A listener forwarded me an email that appeared to be from LinkedIn notifying them of a "new message".

What concerned this gentleman, and quite wisely, was that he didn't know a "Catherine Patterson". While only one of many clues, it was enough to raise the caution flag and seek assistance. Fortunately he asked questions before clicking the links.

I shared the following; perhaps it will be of value to you as well:

You can check the validity of links in Outlook emails by holding your mouse over the link URL. If the URL shown in the mouse-over does not match EXACTLY the URL you’d expect (i.e. linkedin.com -> linkedin.com or at least somethinghere.linkedin.com) you can bet this is bogus. In the example you forwarded, the URL *displayed* is www.linkedin.com but the email code would send you to some crazy amrpartners dot com dot br URL.

While it’s POSSIBLE this is an email re-direct from their email provider, the “.br” domain, among other clues (i.e. you don’t know Catherine Pathttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifterson) makes me confident it’s fraudulent. You can always log in to linkedin.com separately to see if Catherine HAS in fact sent you a message.

Short version: If the mouse-over URL does not equal the displayed URL (and the domain of the site you’ve heard of), simply press delete.